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Long-planned celebrations of Earth Day’s 50th anniversary have been pre-empted by physical-distancing mandates to mitigate the global pandemic. Nevertheless, there are many ways to study environmental challenges, history and solutions, as encouraged by Earth Day’s founder, U.S. Sen. Gaylord A. Nelson (D-Wisconsin). On April 22, 1970, an estimated 20 million people participated in nationwide “teach-ins” and other events on campuses and in urban and rural communities.
Below are thought-provoking resources about Earth Day and its legacies; some examples Wisconsin’s incomparable environmental leadership; and current issues relating to climate change, resilience and environmental justice. They can serve as springboards for individual and intergenerational exploration and virtual study groups. Please consider sharing other environmental resources in the Comments section below.
Earth Day & Its Founder
When the Earth Moves. https://outrider.org/features/earth-day-film/ This just-released short film celebrates the “original vision of Earth Day as a bipartisan and socially just environmental movement and highlights the need for people across generations and on both sides of the political aisle to play an active part.” Archival footage of Gaylord Nelson and contemporary interviews as well as contemporary conservative and progressive climate activists, including Gaylord’s daughter, Tia Nelson.
Gaylord Nelson and Earth Day: The Making of the Modern Environmental Movement http://www.nelsonearthday.net/earth-day/ A comprehensive website about the history and legacies of Earth Day and its founder.
The Man from Clear Lake: Earth Day Founder Senator Gaylord Nelson, by Bill Christofferson. The leading figure in American environmentalism, Nelson learned his values and progressive political principles as a small-town boy in northern Wisconsin. Nelson’s story sometimes intersects with “Fighting Bob” La Follette, Joe McCarthy, and Bill Proxmire in Wisconsin, and with John F. Kennedy, George McGovern, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale and other national leaders.
Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise by Gaylord Nelson, with Susan Campbell and Paul Wozniak; Foreword by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.--In his eighties, Nelson synthesized decades of passionate advocacy and scientific study. This classic guide defines Earth's most crucial environmental concerns—from species and habitat losses to global climate changes--and strategies to save our threatened planet.
Gaylord Nelson: Champion for Our Earth by Sheila Cohen. Nelson comes to life in this Badger Biographies series for young readers. Accessibly written and illustrated with historic images, it includes activities, discussion questions and a glossary of terms.
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Wisconsin’s Environmental & Conservation History
A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There--Aldo Leopold’s seminal work, released posthumously in 1949, achieved prominence around the first Earth Day and was eventually translated into 14 languages. Reborn for Earth Day 50, the 2020 edition includes an introduction by author and conservationist, Barbara Kingsolver. “A land ethic,” Leopold wrote, “enlarges the boundaries of the community” to include not only humans, but also soils, waters, plants, and animals.” Leopold promoted values based on caring—for people, for land, and for all the connections among them.
Studying Wisconsin: The Life of Increase Lapham, early chronicler of plants, rocks, rivers, mounds and all things Wisconsin by Martha Bergland & Paul G. Hayes. Lapham moved to Milwaukee in 1836 and was Wisconsin’s first scientist and conservationist. Self-taught, he mastered botany, geology, archaeology, limnology, mineralogy, engineering, meteorology and cartography. His 1844 guide to the territory was Wisconsin’s first published book. Lapham surveyed and mapped Wisconsin’s effigy mounds, helped create the National Weather Service, and lobbied for a storm-warning system to protect Great Lakes sailors.
Door County's Emerald Treasure: A History of Peninsula State Park, by William H. Tishler. Explores the magnificent park’s history, from its importance to Native Americans and early European settlers to its stature as one of the Midwest’s most popular destinations. In 1909, conservationists and progressives helped create Wisconsin's second state park, a cornerstone of a state park system that became a national model.
Pioneers of Ecological Restoration: The People and the Legacy of the University of Wisconsin Arboretum, by Franklin E. Court. Internationally renowned for trail-blazing ecological restoration of tallgrass prairies, savannas, forests, and wetlands, the UW Arboretum, contains the world’s oldest and most diverse restored ecological communities. Aldo Leopold, a guiding light for Gaylord Nelson, helped develop the 1,260-acre site that serves research, environmental education and public visits. Much of it was built by the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps, and many CCC camp buildings remain in use.
Banning DDT: How Citizen Activists in Wisconsin Led the Way by Bill Berry. In December 1968, DDT “went on trial” in Madison. Berry details how citizens, scientists, reporters, and traditional conservationists drew attention to the harmful effects of “the miracle pesticide” DDT, then widely used to control Dutch elm disease. Leading activists included Senator Nelson and members of the state’s Citizens Natural Resources Association.
Environmental Politics and the Creation of a Dream: Establishing the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore by Harold C. Jordahl, Jr., with Annie L. Booth. Recounts the process of preserving as a national park a breathtaking archipelago of 22 islands in Lake Superior. Jordahl, a key advocate for the effort, which was shepherded by Senator Nelson and President John F. Kennedy, describes the project’s political and bureaucratic complexities.
Contemporary Environmental Activism
Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben, founder of the 350.org climate movement, and perhaps the most widely-respected writer on environmental issues today. Having let decades-old warnings about climate change go unheeded, McKibben writes that “our hope now depends on building the kinds of societies and economies that can hunker down, concentrate on essentials, and create the type of community that will allow us to weather trouble on a planet suddenly and violently out of balance.”
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein. An incisive account of where we are and where we need to go. Klein also collaborated with Avi Lewis on a documentary film by the same name, which builds to Klein’s “most controversial and exciting idea: that we can seize the existential crisis of climate change to transform our failed economic system into something radically better.”
“Call climate change what it is: violence,” a 2014 essay in The Guardian by Rebecca Solnit, writer, historian, cultural analyst and activist.
Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit. Drawing on decades of activism and a wide reading of environmental, cultural and political history, Solnit argues that “radicals have a long [and] neglected history of transformative victories, that positive consequences of actions are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable.” She calls hope “the commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable.”
